HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — A former Georgia hospital technician was sentenced to up to six months in prison after pleading guilty to manipulating the mammogram records of 1,289 patients. Ten of those women were given false negatives, and two of them are now dead, a prosecutor says.

Rachael Rapraeger told the patients at Perry Hospital that their mammograms yielded negative results when a doctor had never reviewed them, according to court documents.

“You played Russian roulette with the lives of essentially a thousand women in this community,” Houston County Superior Judge Katherine Lumsden told the 33-year-old Macon woman during sentencing on Tuesday.

One victim, Sharon Holmes, to whom Rapraeger gave a false mammogram result in December 2009, found out two months later that she had breast cancer and that it had spread to her lymph nodes, CNN affiliate WMAZ reported.

Her cancer has been in remission for three years, the station reported, but that didn’t mitigate her displeasure with Rapraeger. Holmes told WMAZ she wanted Rapraeger to know, “I’m not a name on a piece of paper; I’m a person.”

Holmes had a chance to speak directly to Rapraeger in court, reading from a prepared statement, “You could have made a different decision, and my family and I would not be living this nightmare.”

Rapraeger also received 10 years of probation and a $12,500 fine, according to the sentencing sheet. She also won’t be allowed to hold any job in the health care field for 10 years, the sheet says.

The felony will be wiped from her record if she doesn’t “violate the terms and conditions of the sentence,” said Dan Bibler, deputy assistant district attorney.

Rapraeger will remain free on $50,000 bond, possibly for several weeks until a bed is available at a yet-to-be-determined state probation-detention facility, defense attorney Frank Buford said.

He called the sentence “very fair” and said his client takes responsibility for her crimes and is remorseful that people suffered. Explaining why Rapraeger told so many patients their mammograms were negative, Buford said Rapraeger became overburdened at work and was only trying to please her bosses.

“She just got behind in her work and wanted to try and get caught up,” the attorney said. “She made a poor decision to start entering negative reports just so she could keep up. She didn’t want to fall behind on her work requirements.”

Holmes told WMAZ she was not happy with the sentencing.

“If I’m living a sentence of having cancer then you should live a sentence also: behind bars,” she told the station.

In a September 2010 interview, she told WMAZ that Rapraeger had informed her that her mammogram had come back clean in 2008. In spring of 2010, however, Mizell got a call saying she had been randomly selected to receive a free mammogram, she told the station. That test came back positive, WMAZ reported.

A former Georgia hospital technician was sentenced to up to six months in prison. Only 6 months??? What???? I must have read it wrong – I thought the tech input false information for many patients that resulted in multiple deaths?

This is horrific! She didn’t make one decision – she made 1289 of them. “his client takes responsibility for her crimes and is remorseful that people suffered.” She has no idea what she put these people and their families through. How can her felony conviction be removed? And, she should NEVER be allowed to work in a health care setting again. Her sentence is way too light.

Jen

THIS WOMAN SHOULD ALSO SERVE AS POSTER GIRL (IMAGE) FOR BREAST CANCER AWARENESS FOR A LONG TIME JUST TO MAKE AMENDS. TELL YOUR STORY AND TURN IT INTO A GOOD THING IF YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR SPIRIT TO DO SO,

I have a feeling this may go on for a long, long, long time. The sentence is too light. The person admitted of and, perpetuating this crimes) and reasonable accounts of death should be sentenced at the highest level. I do not want to meet her in 10 years when she is no longer in the sequestered mode of “treating people”. No thank you! Her bad decisions to Cover her A$$ (CHA) left people dead and those who survived the misconceptions are still going through trauma to make things right. This is a sad situation.

Time out. “In spring of 2010, however, Mizell got a call saying she had been randomly selected to receive a free mammogram, she told the station. That test came back positive, WMAZ reported.
[…]
“Notification efforts to the impacted patients commenced April 2010 and continued to completion or resource exhaustion in the ensuing months,” Martin said.”

Am I understanding this correctly? The hospital became aware of these manipulated entries and “notified” the affected parties by telling them they’d been “randomly selected” for a mammogram and from that they got their positive results?

If that’s the case, this hospital is due a lawsuit.

On top of that, this woman needs to be paying out money to each of the living victims who were given false negatives.